Technology News & Views From Electronic Experts

The wise Mr Kurt has drawn my attention to a puzzle from the New York Times.
It asks, if a bicycle is standing up with one of its pedals down, and you pull back on that pedal with string, which way will the bike go.
I am with Mr Kurt…

There was a time I went to ISSCC (the International Solid-State Circuit Conference) in San Francisco each year.
A highlights (apart from flying out a day early and walking off the jet-lag in Marin County) were the evening sessions – particularly the ones hosted by the much-missed Bob…

Without a TV, I miss a few things – and one of those things is a he – Colin Furze – who seems to be bonkers – and has also made a rather good video on DIY hydroforming using a pressure washer.
BTW – only try this at home if you know what you are…

My word.
There is a phone-charging fuel cell on Kickstarter, called Kraftwerk.
Looks like it comes from a comapny called eZelleron, a Fraunhofer Gesellschaft spin-off, and works from lighter gas – butane maybe?
Won’t there be water to tip out occasionally?
Ah ha, just found from the Kickstarter…

I am still trying to have a go with Imaginations Technology’s response to Raspberry Pi: the MIPS (rather than ARM)-based Creator CI20.
Each time I try, I find one more piece of the jigsaw missing.
This time, it was the HDMI cable – the thing in a bag I…

Oh I need to catch up.
As someone without a TV, I have not had to deal with connecting DVD players and such like for a long time.
Before the end of last week, I could recognise Scart, HDMI, and even s-video connections, and even say ‘composite video’ and…

A friend of mine got a really neat accessory for his wood-burning stove at Christmas.
It is a Seebeck-effect (which many websites insist on calling Peltier-effect) fan that blows warm air into the room from the top of the stove, powered by heat from the stove top…

Thanks to the Radio 4 programme Midweek, I now know who invented the bi-metallic snap mechanism that makes modern plastic kettles possible – and has 400 patents to his name.
He is Manxman John Taylor, and the company he forged – Strix – now turns over more than £100m per year.
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